1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a print processing method and a printing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, the printer driver of a host PC generates page description language (PDL) data and transfers it to a print processing apparatus, which in turn performs print processing of the PDL data. More specifically, the controller in the print processing apparatus generates a display list (DL), and renders the data into a bitmap using a hardware or software renderer.
There has also been proposed a technique of processing a page which is accompanied by complicated render commands output from an application and hence takes much time for print processing when rendering the data, by segmenting the PDL data for each band to concurrently generate DLs, and concurrently rendering the DLs segmented for each band. See, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2000-141811 and 2009-245436. Concurrently processing PDL/DL data segmented for each band speeds up the processing of a page which takes much time for processing.
In addition, as forms of performing various types of processes on the server side, techniques called a cloud computing system and SaaS (Software as a Service) have recently begun to be used.
In the conventional technique described above, however, since PDL and DL data are segmented into bands and concurrently processed, if render instructions are unevenly distributed in a page, the processing times for the respective bands vary. For this reason, one page is not generated until the processing of a band including the largest number of render instructions is complete.
Furthermore, the conventional technique described above gives no consideration to the engine speed of a device which outputs a sheet of paper when segmenting PDL and DL data in a page. For this reason, even if PDL and DL data are segmented, the device cannot fully exhibit its performance.